From ‘Dr. Evil’ to hero maker: Philip Zimbardo

Psychologist Philip Zimbardo devised the Stanford Prison Experiment in 1971 to study the line between good and evil.

Psychologist Philip Zimbardo devised the Stanford Prison Experiment in 1971 to study the line between good and evil.

Photo: Peter Prato / Special To The Chronicle

Photo: Peter Prato / Special To The Chronicle

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Psychologist Philip Zimbardo devised the Stanford Prison Experiment in 1971 to study the line between good and evil.

Psychologist Philip Zimbardo devised the Stanford Prison Experiment in 1971 to study the line between good and evil.

Photo: Peter Prato / Special To The Chronicle

From ‘Dr. Evil’ to hero maker: Philip Zimbardo

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After decades of notoriety for demonstrating one of social psychology’s fundamental tenets — how morally pliable most people are — Philip Zimbardo is understandably tired of being associated with the darker sides of human behavior.

Yet the 85-year-old San Francisco psychologist, who taught at Stanford for 50 years and remains a go-to authority on topics such as shyness and the paradox of time as well as social coercion, knows that history has a way of flattening careers into one landmark accomplishment. For Zimbardo, that would be the 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment.

As is well known to anyone who studied the infamous experiment in a Psych 101 course, as a young professor, Zimbardo devised a mock jail in the basement of Stanford’s Jordan Hall to study the psychology of imprisonment. Twenty-four volunteer students played the roles of guards and prisoners — until all hell broke loose (guards putting bags over prisoners’ heads, chaining their legs) and Zimbardo, the “warden,” abruptly cut the study short.

Ever since, his prison experiment has been cultural shorthand for proof of the permeable line between good and evil, that in depersonalized circumstances moral authority can crumble, turning anyone temporarily into a tyrant.

What is far less known to a public still fascinated with the debacle half a century later is that embedded within Zimbardo’s findings on the “banality of evil” was the kernel of a vastly more positive and, he believes, more broadly consequential idea, one that has consumed his attention for the past decade: heroism training.

“If essentially good people are capable of evil, then can’t any of us also be inspired and trained to act heroically, to resist negative social pressure?” he asks. “Can’t the social habits of heroism be taught?”

Zimbardo posed similar questions in a 2008 TED Talk. EBay founder Pierre Omidyar, who happened to be in the audience, urged Zimbardo to develop the idea, offering funding for a nonprofit to study and promote heroism.

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The Heroic Imagination Project was launched in 2010 with a staff of 10 and an office in the Presidio, and started essentially from scratch, Zimbardo said.

“There was nothing on heroism in psychological literature at that time,” he said on a recent afternoon in the Russian Hill home where he’s lived since 1975. “I worked with a team of academics to develop six three-hour-long lessons on transforming passive bystanders into active heroes. And I said, ‘OK, I’m devoting the rest of my life to this.’ My only concern is running out of time.”

Heroism science is now a burgeoning transdisciplinary field of academic research, extending into law, public policy, business and medicine, said Scott T. Allison, a University of Richmond professor of psychology and chairman of the Heroic Imagination Project Science Committee.

“Phil goes all over the world promoting the cause, training people to adopt heroic mind-sets,” Allison said. “And the preliminary anecdotal evidence shows our training modules are working.”

Put into action, this means people intervening in situations in which they used to remain passive: standing up to a bully, calling out wrongdoing at work, helping an injured or distressed stranger, or even interceding on someone’s behalf in a life-threatening situation.

The project has become a preeminent research and educational organization for hero training, offering workshops to high school and college-age students, educators and the general public in 12 countries to date.

This weekend, the project will convene the Hero Round Table, its first global heroism conference at the Marines’ Memorial Theatre in San Francisco. Among the participants: Pentagon Papers whistle-blower Daniel Ellsberg; Auschwitz survivor, psychologist and author Edith Eger; Dr. James Doty, director of the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education; “15:17 to Paris” film star and real-life train-attack hero Anthony Sadler.

Ebullient and fast-talking, Zimbardo can relate recent stories about heroic actors from around the world. One gets the sense that he may be racing the clock to live down his negatively tinged legacy, but also that, at this late stage in his career, he’s found a field of inquiry that keeps him on psychology’s cutting edge — and is better aligned with his relentlessly upbeat personality.

“I’ve always been an extreme optimist, and a helper,” he said. Growing up poor in the South Bronx, “my mother always said, ‘Your job is to make life happier for your brothers and sisters.’”

While the prison experiment looms large over his reputation, Zimbardo has managed to stay both academically relevant and highly regarded publicly over the intervening decades. He’s an expert in a staggering array of psychological phenomena, including time perspective, attitudinal change, de-individuation and shyness. He’s written 60 books and recently rewrote the eighth edition of his widely used textbook “Core Concepts in Psychology.”

He travels three months of the year, speaking to audiences around the world about what he calls “my journey from evil to embracing the heroic.” He returned recently from London to lecture a few days later to a group of Russian bankers at Stanford.

“Looking back now, I see I should have been studying heroes much earlier. In my boyhood friend Stanley Milgram’s (electric shock) experiments at Yale in the ’60s, or in my prison study, of course we saw how relatively easy it is for the majority of ordinary people to be seduced into committing evil acts,” he said. “But there was always a minority of people I should have been focused on who resisted the pressures. Like Christina.”

That would be Zimbardo’s wife, Christina Maslach. Back in 1971, she had just received her doctorate in social psychology from Stanford when she became disturbed enough by the behavior she saw during the prison experiment to persuade Zimbardo, then her boyfriend, to halt the study.

There isn’t a scientific explanation yet for why some people like Maslach seem more naturally ready to defend a moral cause, even at some degree of personal risk. Genes, family values and an empathy gene all have been posited, but social science is starting to back Zimbardo’s claims about the efficacy of training people “to put their compassion into civic action.”

A new study published in the Journal of Humanistic Psychology, surveying fourth- and fifth-grade children in Michigan after hero training, is “the first empirical evidence for statistically significant changes in courageous action in schoolchildren,” said Zeno Franco, a professor at Medical College of Wisconsin who has worked closely with Zimbardo since 2003.

“There’s now research that shows that just learning about the bystander effect, about its existence, reduces bystander behavior,” said Hero Round Table founder Matt Langdon, who’s publishing a “Hero’s Handbook” aimed at young readers later this year. “Hero training is very similar to CPR training. We hope you never have to use it, but if you do, we want you to be prepared.”

The key to “awakening everyone’s heroic instincts,” Zimbardo said, is twofold: first, redefining who a hero is. “We must debunk the myth of a ‘heroic elect,’” he said, and instead “promote the idea that heroes are ordinary people who take extraordinary action.”

Second, it’s about having a “growth mind-set” — a popular psychology buzz phrase coined by Zimbardo’s famous colleague and former student, Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck, for one’s belief that our abilities and aptitudes aren’t static but can be developed over time. “Heroism begins in the mind, with thinking of yourself as a hero,” Zimbardo said.

“People might think (Zimbardo has) done a 180 by turning to heroism from evil, but I don’t think so,” Dweck said. “I don’t see it as a sharp turn because in almost all of his past work ... he’s seen people who resisted the group mentality, kept their bearing and acted in what we’d call a heroic manner. Rather than changing his interest, he’s turned the focus to them. He’s asking, ‘Are they just an extraordinary few, or do all of us have that potential within?’”

As a hero builder, “I’m excited by this moment, seeing the start of strong heroic movements like the #MeToo women and the (Parkland) kids opposing guns,” Zimbardo said. “When one person stands up against injustice, dishonesty or fraud, it’s easier for others to take action, too. They remind us all that heroism is not an abstract concept, but a continual personal choice.”

Jessica Zack is a freelance writer who contributes regularly to The San Francisco Chronicle.